The past 6 months

June – November 2011

     The academic session started with the first hand experience of rubbing shoulders with the regular school system. We were trying to admit our son in the 10th class, who was in Adharshila (an unrecognized learning centre) for the first 9 years. The papers, affidavits and all. We experienced the anguish of the hapless adivasi parents who have to run for the various certificates from panchayats to tehsils for months to get their children admitted. The photocopy shops make a heist. In this month farmers are running in search of two things - seeds and loans for the farm and certificates and hostels for the kids.

     Even though the rains tested every body’s patience the meeting for new admissions was a moral booster. New, excited children and parents. Nice way to forget those who have decided to leave. Even more encouraging this year was the group of people who wanted to open a new centre in Roshmal. Kukna an AMS activists mobilized parents of 3 villages to start a Centre in their village. He listed 35 parents, keen to start the new centre, formed a committee to manage the school and brought them to Adharshila for a one day meeting with us to understand the philosophy and structure of Adhrshila. Ultimately this didn’t work out as they couldn’t find anybody to run the centre. But it resulted in two young boys and girls coming to Adharshila for the teacher training program while studying for the 10th exam from open school. We hope they will be able to run such children’s centres after one or two years – a future plan. The children of Sakad village took lots of vegetable seeds and some tree plants for their homes.

     The 4th issue of Yuvaniya, a magazine for youth came out. We established a good rapport with the workers of Muskaan, an NGO working with Gond children in Bhopal slums who came to help in typing and editing the issue. We are currently working on the 5th issue, a special issue for the Adivasi Ekta Sammelan to be held in Rajasthan in January. We are after the main leaders of the Ekta Parishad to write for the issue. Through Yuvaniya, 4 writing workshops for adivasis were conducted from where most of the material for the magazine was generated.

Kamal

     Ex students – one of our oldest stars, Majali did us proud by agreeing to go to Bomliya paat a settlement (not a recognized village) in Burhanpur 200km away, to help the community and Adivasi Ekta Sangathan restart a school  which they had started three years ago. Another oldie, Kamal has taken a six month gap after graduation to visit organizations in other tribal areas. He went to Jharkhand and stayed with Arvind Anjum for 3 weeks. In the Adharshila Scholarship program one student of class 12th is being supported.

     Children are encouraged to participate in social and political events in the area. The Adharshila children’s song and dance troupe performed at two adivasi sammelans in Maharashtra and MP. Right now also they have gone to Zoida village in Maharashtra. Maybe the Naatak India Company will get to perform in Rajasthan. We are still trying to get sponsors ( hint for SRUTI ). The children performed a play in the school on 15th August, depicting the story of Independence. The senior students participated in two rallies held in Sendhwa and Pansemal. Two teachers also attended programs of an adivasi organization in the Pati block.

      

     Adharshila has been taking up the role of training teachers of community schools. In the first half this year 5 trainings were held. Two in the Kakrana School in Alirajpur district. Two boys from Burhanpur stayed here for a month for teacher training to help in the Burhanpur School. One training cum meeting was organized for adivasi teachers of five schools run by adivasi sangathan/communities. 15 teachers from the 5 schools participated. A great feeling of camraderie was felt amongst the teachers. Some common programs were decided – drawing workshops and folk story documentation. About 50 folk stories were collected in these schools in 3 districts. A Kahani Marathon was conducted at Adharshila where about 60 children, age 8 years – 18years and some villagers narrated stories for about 4 days, two hours everyday. About 15 children made illustrated books out of their stories. Hopefully we will be able to print a collection of some of these stories by the end of this academic year.

     In this vein three student teachers from Adharshila volunteered for a month at a remote school run by Jagrut Adivasi Dalit Sangathan in Barwani District. We too were invited to take a course at TISS, Tuljapur to do an Educations Skills course for the final year BSW students. It was interesting to compare there infrastructure with ours both for 150 children. Jayashree conducted a women’s training for the Satna group voluntarily.

     Lot of work on basic curriculum development was completed. Most of the math curriculum for the primary and some modules for the middle schools were made thanks to Mansi. Work on English and Hindi language primers also went ahead. Jayashree tried her hand at illustrations quite successfully. Two interns from TISS, Mumbai, doing Masters in Elementary Education helped document two social science modules one each in Geography and History.

     Vibhore was with us for 3 months intermittently, under the Adharshila Fellowship Program. While volunteering he was engaged in thinking about the question of bringing social change through education.     

     

     This year a poultry was started by the two students who went for training in the summers. So now we have an organic farm, cattle shed and poultry, looked after by the children under the guidance of adults. The poultry has more than 50 birds, starting with 7.  the organic farm has given us about 4 quintal veggies uptil now. This year we also have a papaya plot. These activities are important for us as one of the basic premise of this educational program is that we – adults and children - should engage in the activities that are done by the villagers. One group has made a potato plot for themselves. Another group developed a herbal garden which lasted for 4 months. 

 

Students and teachers constructing the hen cage

Our newest residents

Field preparation

Group fertilizer preparation

     Many inhouse workshops were conducted for and by children on Origami, craft, math, story writing etc. Children of one group have become avid bird watchers. There is an origami group. At least 6 children have tried there hand at violin. Two are still persisting. Two parent meetings were conducted where the children presented what they had learnt. And kabaad se jugaad is happening always. First there was the kite fever – kites being made from plastic, then there were the plastic balls, bhingris etc.

     Some friends insist on coming to Adhrshila and they claim that they get a lot of inspiration. One such group is INSPIRE who bring NRI children to see the ‘real’ India. People from two NGOs also visited us. A group of villagers who wanted to start a school also stayed for a day. Some businessmen from Indore visited the ‘Sakad Ashram’ through some other friends. And lastly these days we have the annual visitor the Wagtail from the Himalayas.
    
     Construction of a kitchen extension shed was done and the mess hall was partitioned to make two rooms.

     We are 100 children and nine adults. A group of 8 senior children help Shevanta, Shanta and Badri bhai manage the show. This year almost all the day scholars have vanished due to the RTE and the stipend being given to children.

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The Beginning - July 2011

Well, finally the year has started at Adharshila.

All the rooms cleaned, most things placed in their places. Teachers know where to go when and the children too. How fast they adapt to a system, poor chaps. We have started knowing them a little, which ones come near and the ones who change course on seeing elders.

Initially we were sceptical about the number of children. Though 35 parents got there children registered in the meeting for new admissions, they did'nt turn up till one week. It was getting late and late. The monsoon was just not coming, just strong winds. People here, first think about the farm and then the children. As they have to take credit for both the ventures and of course the farm is more important. As the there was no sight of the monsoon the money lenders had stopped giving credit to the farmers not even after keeping silver. Every year at this time we think about good, free education for the poorest section of the people but stop short, thinking of fund raising as we are not into the institutional funding mode and rely on friends for support.

With no kids and no rains around we started dissecting the whole project of education, schooling and the uselessness and all the negatives and started wondering what we were doing here.

Eventually the rains came and the children too and ended all the conversations and rubbished all theories. About forty new faces, mostly boys though. Now we are around 80, twenty short of last year. Most of them are below 12 -13 years. Two have come to study for the 10^th open school exam and help in the school.

Our house too, now has a semblance of order. The rats have come down to a tolerable number. The plumbing line damaged due the uprooting of a tree near our water tank has finally been repaired and we have water in the one and only kitchen tap. Removing the tree was a very arduous task requiring hard labour of senior boys for almost six hours, done over two three days.

There is electricity, touch wood. It can come and go in a snap - very erratic like the rains this year. Actually this time of the year the demand for electricity is very less but the excuse for not coming are lightening and strong winds which damage the long wires and transformers. Valid excuse they say but we shell out for the burnt out laptop chargers and inverters. (inverter blown twice and one laptop charger gone in the past 15 days, we don’t count the mobile chargers as they are just 80 bucks).

But all this was not as easy as writing this paragraph. It took us and everybody here about two weeks and still we are on our toes. But the great thing is that we can do our own plumbing, and electricity repairs, and battery maintenance, in- house.

The children have been divided in three groups. Those who don’t recognize the alphabets and numbers, those who know all this, a little and the elder ones who have been here. There are two elder boys 8^th pass and 9^th fail, are training to help small children and about organic farming and whatever else goes on here. For starters most of the time is taken by singing and playing and vocal exercises and exploring the campus and surroundings. The main themes are rain, farming and water. So we have on the menu lot of songs, folk mostly, and exercises with water – words related to water and rain, why does water rise in a brick, which one is faster, sounds produced by water, how many drops of water my bottle can take… it will go on for almost twenty days.

And yes, we have set up our music room with two each of harmoniums, tablas, guitar and a small casio and dholak. Only thing lacking is a teacher. Please forward this to aspiring volunteers. Four children have started on the tabla and violin.

The best news at the end – Jayashree’s new venture this year is the poultry, so we have acquired three hens and cock which is crowing right now. This is being taken care of by Abhishek who went to an exposure visit to Ratnagiri, Maharashtra, to learn from the work of ANTHRA, an NGO.

Second, Majli a girl from the first batch of Adharshila has done us proud by helping Manish, in starting a new school in a very remote village with no electricity and road. The community had run a school for two years with our help but it had stopped. This year it’s on, again. Let’s see if Majli can take it forward. There are around 40 children there. She needs all support from all of us and friends.

Manish, will also be helping at Adharshila this year, while seeing the new school with Majli.

And thanks to Adam (a student of Environmental Science, Toronto, Canada) and Nihal (engineering student from Bangalore, India), who visited for a few days, for the pictures.

Bye for now. Hope to connect again soon.

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